


keep your sins (i've got plenty of my own)

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Episode: s02e16 Afterlife, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 19:51:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7067686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I can only imagine how angry you are,” she says. “Or I <i>could</i>, if I cared to.” At the moment she’s rather more concerned with the way her shoulders are aching from the hunch these damned cuffs force her into than with Ann’s sermonizing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	keep your sins (i've got plenty of my own)

**Author's Note:**

> Over on tumblr an anon prompted "I can only imagine how angry you are" for biospecialist and somehow that collided with shineyma's [lovely gifset](http://shineyma.tumblr.com/post/142157252607/biospecialist-au-role-reversal) in my brain.

“Do you have any idea the _disappointment_?” Ann asks, hopefully wrapping up what has been a _terribly_ long speech. “Do you even care at all for the damage you’ve caused?”

Jemma lets out a long breath. “I can only imagine how angry you are,” she says. “Or I _could_ , if I cared to.” At the moment she’s rather more concerned with the way her shoulders are aching from the hunch these damned cuffs force her into than with Ann’s sermonizing. “Mostly I’ve spent the last twenty minutes trying not to laugh at the woman who sent Bobbi and Mack to _spy_ on us and subsequently _invaded our base_ calling me a traitor.”

“You _are_ a traitor, young lady,” Gonzales says. His voice is a growl, but Jemma’s beginning to think it’s incapable of being anything else, so she doesn’t take it terribly personally. “You’re _HYDRA_.”

“Was,” Jemma corrects. “As in, am no longer. Unlike you lot, who have been spying and sneaking for months now. At least _I_ learned my lesson.”

Her tongue is her weakness, she’s always known it. HYDRA gave her ample freedom, both scientifically and socially. Where some agents used this freedom to murder their compatriots over trifling spats or in efforts to rise in rank, Jemma used it to deliver all the insults she never could in SHIELD. Little things that would have seen her written up in the Academy were laughed at like great jokes within HYDRA. She used to be decent at pretending not to be _quite_ so disrespectful on those occasions she had to visit the Hub or the Sandbox, but it’s like the Uprising flipped a switch in her and she hasn’t been able to turn it off again. It’s no doubt slowed down her reconciliation with the rest of the team and is winning her no favors here, certainly.

Ann appears incensed by her words and the guards flanking the door both stiffen in what is surely anger, but it’s that Calderon fellow who actually speaks.

“Why you little-” He’s half out of his seat before Gonzales stops him with a muttered word. Or, they both _pretend_ that’s what’s stopped him. The truth is that Calderon’s recently acquired injury (Jemma has no idea what caused it but, from the looks of its age she’s hoping he suffered it taking the base) leaves him pale and drops him right back in his chair.

“You will find, Miss Simmons-” _Miss_ Simmons, Gonzales says, like she’s a civilian and for the first time in her life she’s not angry it’s the doctor that’s been forgotten- “that we here at SHIELD are far less forgiving of joking about HYDRA than Coulson’s people were.”

She shoots Bobbi a glance. The only one joke Jemma makes with any frequency regarding her previous loyalties is to greet Ward with a cheeky “hail HYDRA” whenever it’s not likely to result in some low level agent overhearing and pulling a gun on her because they don’t understand the concept of _humor_. She tried the same with Bobbi once since she was also undercover in HYDRA, albeit for a far shorter time than Ward, but she didn’t seem to appreciate it in the least and Jemma gave it up. She supposes one of the pages in the thick file sitting in front of Ann details that attempt at making friends.

“Coulson may have trusted you,” Gonzales goes on, “but I’m afraid we can take no such chances.”

“Of course not,” she mutters because she can’t keep her tongue in check to save her life, “the guilty cannot help but see their own sins everywhere.” No wonder Bobbi couldn't take her tiny joke.

Calderon mutters something unkind. The room at large ignores him.

“And we can’t keep you here,” Gonzales goes on. “You’ve had months to acquaint yourself with the Playground’s holding cells in anticipation of imprisonment-” he makes it sound like it was inevitable and this time her tongue sits dully behind her teeth- “so you’ll be transferred to the _Iliad_ until it’s decided what to do with you.”

The guards at the door come forward. Her cuffs are undone only so far as it takes to free her from her chair and then she’s being escorted out of the conference room. There was, it seems, no point in any of that save proving themselves superior to her.

Ponces.

She keeps her head high as they march her through the halls. She will not let them shame her, not in this place she made a home while they were seeking only to tear it down. She ignores Mack entirely when paraded past his sickroom. They think they’re better than her? Well, they’re not even worth her notice.

The punishment portion of the day isn’t over yet, however. She’s led to a quinjet - one of several sitting in the Playground’s hangar now that Gonzales and his men have taken up residence - and has to fight with every step to keep her head. She will _not_ let them see her rattled. She will not allow them the satisfaction of seeing her hands shake or lip quiver. And she _certainly_ will not cry from fear. She’s not a _child_ , she can handle a little flight.

In a very little plane.

With a door that opens right onto the cabin so as to suck passengers out mid-flight.

She might be a bit pale as they cuff her to the floor and then strap her into her seat.

She concentrates on taking deep, even breaths and keeping her expression neutral. She is stone. She is a statue. And statues to not scream in fear when the plane they are being transported in jolts as it lifts through the hangar doors, no matter how badly they may want to.

Jemma doesn’t know much about flight. She might once have attempted to learn a thing or two from May, but that bloody Chitauri helmet ruined any chance of that long before she was comfortable enough with the woman to try. That said, she has no idea what the signal is that has her guards relaxing a quarter of an hour into the flight, but there must be one because the tension goes out of them both and the one on her left stands to move across the cabin to the other row of seats. He pulls off his helmet, revealing a face that would be pretty if it wasn’t twisted so when it looks on her. The guard on Jemma’s right pulls out his ICER and begins fiddling with it, dismantling it so far as is necessary to examine the firing pin.

“How many?” the almost-pretty guard asks.

Jemma doesn’t respond, mostly because she’s not certain she can without it coming out small and frightened, so she keeps up her coolly detached attitude.

The guard appears less pretty by the second. “How many SHIELD agents did you kill, you bitch?”

Her eyes snap to him. She’s been called any number of horrid names in her life and _bitch_ is far from the worst on the list, but that doesn’t mean she simply accepts it.

“That,” she says, drawing her words out so as to be certain they are as dismissive as she intends, “was _rude_.”

His mouth opens in some twisted approximation of a smile and his palm slides almost lovingly over his sidearm. It, Jemma notes, is not an ICER.

The guard to her right only goes on calmly reassembling, not at all caring that his compatriot is plainly contemplating murdering her.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

She can’t look to the right or she’ll see the blue sky in the cockpit window and be terrified, and she can’t look left or she’ll see the ramp and be similarly stricken. With no other options, she closes her eyes and lets her head fall back against her seat.

One. The answer to his question is one. She killed one, solitary SHIELD agent. He was good and kind and he was mildly infatuated with her prior to the Uprising - it didn’t stop him seeing the holes in her cover and she was lucky she made it out of that altercation alive.

With her eyes shut, she can’t escape the memory of his blank eyes staring up at her, forever accusing.

“I asked you a question, you-”

The sudden stop to the guard’s words is a surprise, but it’s nothing to the shock she feels when the guard beside her leans close to whisper, “Hail HYDRA,” in her ear. It’s followed immediately by the distinctive _fwip_ of ICER fire and then the warmth of the guard is gone from her side. Another _fwip_ sounds, farther away, and when she dares open her eyes, she sees him pulling the pilot out of his seat. He drags the poor man to lay him next to the first guard and then turns to her.

Jemma’s fingers wrap so tightly around the chain holding her in place that she’s certain she’ll have bruises. If she is very, very lucky, a HYDRA mole inside Gonzales’ operation will have enough on his plate that he’ll execute her and be done with it. But of course, if he were content with that, why not let the bastard on the floor do it for him? So the only question is, which of the heads does he work for? Into whose hands will she be delivered?

Bragan will brainwash her without hesitation. Prahl will give her to those dogs she calls scientists and Jemma will spend the rest of her life in a lab as a very unfortunate test subject. Von Strucker she might be able to talk her way out of. He always did like her research and the things she learned from studying Skye in the wake of San Juan would be invaluable to him. (She ignores the twinge of guilt she feels at the thought of giving him said intel. Survival is paramount, it always has been. She can’t discover the secrets of the universe if she’s dead.) There’s always Malick, of course, but that old zealot’s as likely to consider her useful as he is to sacrifice her on a brazen altar.

All in all the choices are not good.

Finally her new captor lifts away his helmet and she’s not certain whether she should still be frightened or not.

“ _Ward?_ ” she demands.

“You know, I usually get a different reaction when I save someone,” he says, dropping to his knees to undo her cuffs. “Not that there’s anything wrong with your choice, but I’m just saying, hugs are more encouraging.”

She shakes her head, ignoring his words and trying to focus on things that actually matter. “I thought they captured you,” she says.

“They did. Threw me in your old room.”

She makes a face at the mere mention of Vault D; the two weeks she spent there were fourteen days too many.

Ward shrugs. “I got bored, so I came looking for you.”

“Just like that?” she asks.

He smiles. “Maybe not _just_ like that.” The cuffs fall away and his hand wraps around her right wrist, covering the reddened flesh. “Did they hurt you?”

She shakes her head. Not physically, at least, and as their attempts at leaving emotional scars were infantile at best, she sees no reason to consider them.

He squeezes gently and she thinks his smile might be genuine. “Good.” He climbs to his feet and heads for the cockpit. “Now, I’m thinking we should meet up with Coulson. You in?”

Some of the tension wrapped around her heart eases. “You’re not HYDRA.”

He twists in the pilot’s seat to give her an incredulous look.

“Well, you _said_ -”

“Yeah,” he says, “and _you_ always say it to me.” He turns back around but she can still hear his muttering. “Every morning, every damn phone call…”

She rolls her eyes and stands to shift down the row of seats, closer to the cockpit. From here, she can see almost none of the blue sky and more of Ward’s profile.

“In my defense, it’s been one of those days.”

He huffs out an unhappy laugh. “Yeah. So? Coulson?”

“Yes, please,” she says eagerly.

Despite what Gonzales might think, Coulson doesn’t entirely trust her - none of the old team do yet (and it’s a sign of how bad things are that Ward is giving her his back) - but she _earned_ that distrust; the others have every right to nurse their grudges. Gonzales and his people have none.

“Ward?” she asks once the plane’s leveled out again.

He grunts, his version of an invitation to go on.

“Why did you save me?”

His hands tighten on the controls. “You may not have noticed, what with your stone cold bitch act and all, but that guy was gonna shoot you.”

“I know.” She looks to the men laying in a heap on the floor and bends forward to wrap her arms around her knees. “But you were in that meeting room, you escorted me there from the medical ward.” He was _planning_ this - or at least some variation on it - when he should’ve been jumping for joy. His chance to be rid of her and her lies and the jokes she just can’t stop making and he didn’t take it. Ignoring the rogue agent who was intending on killing her, Gonzales was only going to lock her up. There would’ve been no guilt in leaving her to that fate.

Ward’s expression is blank but slowly the tension in his jaw eases and he releases his stranglehold on the controls. “They think Coulson’s an alien,” he says finally.

“ _What?_ ” That is the most patently absurd thing she’s ever heard. However … now that he says it, it does put some of Bobbi’s questions about the GH-325 in a new light.

“Yeah,” Ward agrees and this time when he laughs it sounds almost genuine. “They’re obviously a few screws short. I figured our favorite former HYDRA spy wasn’t gonna be safe with them, so I made it look like I’d escaped the base and then I came back for you.”

He makes it sound easy. He was free and he could’ve been helping Coulson by now but he risked it all for her. She presses her mouth to her knees, fighting the warmth that threatens to spread through her. It was, she’s sure, a tactical decision. That she can’t see the tactics of it doesn’t matter, Ward always sees all the angles.

“Hey.” His voice is oddly gentle. “You okay? You need to lay down or move to the back or-?”

“No. I’m fine.” She forces herself to sit upright (she is not a child and should stop acting like one). “Thank you. For saving me.”

“Don’t thank me yet. We’re going on the run here and HYDRA’s still got a price out on you - a big one. You’re in more danger with me than you would’ve been in one of the _Iliad’s_ holding cells.”

She smiles at his profile. Somehow, she very much doubts that.

 


End file.
